"Westerners have abandoned an ethical basis for society, believing that all problems are solvable by a good government...In the West, especially after World War II, the government came to be seen as so successful that it could fulfill all the obligations that in less modern societies are fulfilled by the family."
- Lee Kuan Yew

Much of Iowa used to be heavily wooded before anyone settled here. That makes it kind of funny that you now see more trees in the urban areas of the state than in most of the rural areas.

There's been a lot of talk about how we've gone a very long time without any new oil refineries being built in the United States. But if you think that the record profits being taken home by the oil companies these days will be plowed into the construction of new refineries, you might think again: An energy-research firm says that the cost of refinery construction has risen by about 66% in just five years. That kind of a price hike could easily be enough to encourage them to find other things to invest in.

Of course, we can't forget that here in Iowa, all of our new ethanol and biodiesel plants are effectively like oil refineries -- they just don't use oil. And it should also be noted that even though new refineries haven't been built, existing refineries have been expanded. Regardless, gas prices are still going up, and that's going to continue to change people's behavior -- and we're going to pay for it in ways we might not think about, since fuel costs influence everything from the cost of fertilizer to the cost of getting virtually every good into the local store.

A (relatively) low-cost genome-sequencing machine could be putting us very close to the era of personalized medicine. That could be great news, especially if it lets us take preventative measures that will keep us healthy, even if Nature's trying to kill us.

I use the phrase "tax competition" as a sort of catch-all for the ways in which governments of all sorts compete with one another (say, between cities or states) to provide a better mix of services to people at the lowest possible rate of taxation. The story that an English village is holding an unofficial vote on secession is just evidence that tax competition is real. And that's a good thing for taxpayers.